April 2023

In this issue...

Staff Working Conditions and Wellbeing Survey

Pupil Learning Experience and Wellbeing Survey

Welcome back

Welcome back to the start of a new term. I hope you had a wonderful Easter break with family and friends, or however you decided to spend the time.

I also want to take this opportunity to wish fellow Muslims Eid Mubarak.

I would also like to thank you for the incredible support that you are giving our learners who are due to sit their SATs, GCSEs or A-Level/Vocational courses. I wish them every success over the coming weeks.

An exciting development to let you know about this term is the launch of the inaugural Nova Education Trust Transformational Awards 2023. The awards are open to all schools and operating units within Nova Education Trust, and its educational partner schools.

It is an opportunity to:

Have your diligence, commitment and practice recognised through a high-quality judging process
Reflect on your journey of improvement — the awards are not about perfection, but recognising school and operating unit commitment to improvement and having a positive impact
Lead the way as an exemplar of school transformation
Take an opportunity to reflect on your school community’s work against the awards criteria
Give your school and its community cause for celebration

Your Head Teacher will share further information with you about the award scheme. There are ten categories that seek to recognise whole school/operating unit's rather than individuals per se. The categories are:

Outstanding Vision and Strategy
Community Impact
Giving Back
Innovation
Inclusion
Environmental Impact
Parent Engagement
Pupil Engagement
Employee Engagement
School of the Year Primary and School of the Year Secondary

Nominations need to be in by the 2 October 2023. The Award event will be held on the evening of Thursday 30 November 2023 in the Senate Chamber, University of Nottingham. Each Head Teacher will have a number of tickets to distribute to staff guests.

I hope this is the start of us having more opportunities to network and celebrate together as a whole trust family.

Best wishes,

Ash Rahman
CEO

Staff Working Conditions and Wellbeing Survey

Last academic year, I shared with you our strategic plan which put staff first as our number one priority. I set out that we needed to hear honestly and openly from you when we ran our very first Edurio Staff Working Conditions and Wellbeing Survey in January 2022. I outlined that going forward we all needed to be change agents to make our working environment the positive and inclusive place that we want it to be. A community where all colleagues are kind, supportive and thoughtful to others whilst at the same time striving to make our vision of transformational education for our pupils a reality.

In January 2023, we ran our now annual Edurio Staff Working Conditions and Staff Wellbeing Survey again, and an amazing 78% of all our staff participated. I am delighted to be able to share with you that together we have made some astonishing community progress in 12 months — or rather 195 school days!

When compared to the survey results in 2022 (see table below), we made positive progress across all areas, and are now above the national benchmark figure that Edurio compare us with for the vast majority of modules. For context, the National Staff Benchmark compares us with responses collected from September 2021 to August 2022 (comprised of up to 41,254 staff answers from up to 890 UK schools, 78 trust teams from 83 trusts).

Whilst I know we still aren't perfect, we together will continue to change, adapt and evolve based upon your feedback. I do want share that due to your passion to speak up, trust us and commit to being an integral component of our trust improvement journey, the success we have had has led to us becoming nationally recognised. Alongside being asked by Edurio to be a case study of sector excellence, we have also been invited on stage at a national sector conference in mid-June to talk about our experience and progress to date.

Please continue to be part of our amazing journey. Continue to engage with us so that we can deliver on our promises to:

Put your well-being front, right and centre
Actively listen to you and recognise your contributions — big or small
Develop you as highly effective practitioners in the leadership of people — ‘coaching, not telling’
Invest in you and provide flexible and easy access to excellent professional development and progression pathways
Provide you with the opportunity to network with talented colleagues from within and outside of the trust as part of our commitment to civic collaboration

Pupil Learning Experience and Wellbeing Survey

Our trust strategic plan also focuses obviously on our pupils. So it is once again the turn of our pupils to have their say on their learning experience in our schools.

Across the trust, we have three different surveys running which span our reception-aged pupils, primary pupils (Year 1–Year 6) and secondary/post-16 pupils.

Last year we collected data from around 5,849 pupils representing approximately 50% of our learner community, an increase of 12% on the 2021 survey collection point. This year we are hoping to do even better, with your help! So please do take a moment in your day to talk positively to pupils about how important it is to use the opportunity they are being provided with to use their voice to help shape the future of their school, and the wider trust as a whole. Please also continue to consider ways in which we can work together with pupils as co-researchers, developing projects and exploring relevant issues. Collectively then we can improve pupils learning experience, wellbeing and the environment that they learn in.